At Feeding San Diego’s food distribution center in Sorrento Valley, there was a celebration on Thursday morning — and its importance was made clear by some sobering statistics.
“There is an estimate that over 300,000 people in the county of San Diego are facing food insecurity at any point in time during the year. Of that, over 80,000 of them are children," said Feeding San Diego CEO Bob Kamensky.
Feeding San Diego works with hundreds of local charities, including schools, health care providers and faith communities, providing food to feed all those people. In 2022, they opened a small pantry at its headquarters on Waples Street. Today marked the opening of an expanded pantry; they call it a marketplace. It's twice the size of the old one.
“I’ve been here since January and I just want to say that it’s been amazing," said Isaiah De La Rosa, a sophomore at UC San Diego. He’s doing an internship at Feeding San Diego.
But he doesn’t just work there. He also gets food there.
“I don’t have to worry about food. I don’t have to worry about paying for that on top of paying for my rent, or paying for tuition," De La Rosa said.
Feeding San Diego helps with more than just feeding people. The core to its mission is rescuing food that would otherwise end up in the landfill. Leticia Rodriguez oversees that process, working with manufacturers and growers in San Diego.
"Either they overproduce or they have extra product that they weren’t able to sell," Rodriguez said.
Feeding San Diego also rescues excess food from retail stores, with the help of partner agencies.
"They do about 865 pickups a week. And that product goes straight to the community. It never even comes to our warehouse," Rodriguez said.
But the food that does come here is now easier and more efficient to distribute, food that anyone can shop for here once a month, no questions asked.
